I was gratified by the wonderful response to Killing Floor. That being said, as I tried to continue it, I realised I couldn't do it. I couldn't justify the bashing characterisation of Dumbledore along with James and Sirius, it felt like too much of a mess. And I had a few other ideas that I wanted to implement. So, I decided to make Dumbledore far less bashable in this version (he's technically a good guy in this, but opposes Harry and Sawyer's methods)...albeit while deepening the villainy of this version of James and Sirius, as you will see later in the story.
I also made Harry/Hal as mute as Sawyer, for reasons that will be made clear in the story proper. And I had an idea during the writing of Killing Floor that I wanted to implement, so I put it in here. It's a big twist at the end of the first chapter, though what that twist actually means will depend on the reviews I get for this chapter.
DISQUIET
CHAPTER 1:
THE MUTE TWINS
Roanapur. George Lucas, when writing of Mos Eisley, had Obi-Wan Kenobi describe it as a 'wretched hive of scum and villainy'. He may very well have been speaking of Roanapur. A city in southeast Thailand, it was very much a hub for many criminal activities, and indeed had a number of criminal gangs, some vying for supremacy, others willing to keep the status quo. It was at once a violent and yet strangely stable place. It was filled with life not in the same way a corpse is filled with life, with maggots and scavengers and the like, but filled with life in the way a jungle was.
Life was hard and harsh on the streets. This wasn't to say one couldn't live here legitimately, and earn a legitimate livelihood. But the criminal element was somewhat more pronounced here than usual around the world. It may not be the most crime-ridden location on the Earth, perhaps not even making it into the top ten, but it was certainly at the extreme end of the bell curve.
The thing about crime, especially violent crime, is that it is messy. This is a result of the human body containing a lot of mess. Blood, viscera, faecal matter, urine, etc. Mess tends to draw comment, and while the crime bosses have considerable sway in Roanapur, there are times when they need messes cleaned up, and someone to deal with the bodies and blood. Sometimes, they need someone to also mess up a perfectly intact and alive body, and turn it into a mess, as a message.
There are two people who fit these criteria. They are both known as the Sawyer Twins, and very little is known about these silent sentinels, only that they are both frequently clad in surgical scrubs and goggles when they are met, and are rather slender. In truth, they are not siblings, though they are, albeit very distantly, related. They were also, at least for the past few years, lovers. It would have been surprising to those not in the know that one of the pair was a young woman. And despite the fact that they had been cleaners for some time, they were also young, with the woman just barely out of her teens. But they were old in spirit.
People didn't talk about the past in Roanapur. The past was a closed book, at least before you came here. But soon, the Sawyer Twins' past would come back to haunt them…or perhaps it was they who would come back to haunt their pasts…
Light peeked in through the bedroom, where a pair of forms were curled up on the bed, both naked, both about the same age. The young woman had her scarred arms around the young man's body, her breasts pressed into his back. On the wall was a movie poster for Army of Darkness, and another for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Tattered forensic science journals were on the floor and a desk, with said desk also having, amongst other things, a disc-like device on a choker, and a rod-like device.
The young man was about nineteen, with a messy mop of black hair, his handsome, if rather lugubrious, features were marred by a jagged scar on his forehead, like a lightning bolt, as well as rather sunken eyes. These sunken eyes were shared by the woman, who also had short, brown hair, and a face that would have been considered beautiful, had it not been for the usually-apathetic or morbid expressions that were on it normally, though the blissful repose helped soften up features hardened by life before and in Roanapur. Massive scars were on their necks, like a perverse necklace of keloid tissue.
As light entered through the window, the pair stirred gently. The young woman opened her eyes first, and then her smile widened a little. She closed her eyes briefly, inhaling the scent of her lover through her nostrils, savouring it like a bouquet of flowers, before she sighed in satisfaction. She clambered off the bed, just in time for the young man to open his eyes, and get a wonderful view of her callipygian rear.
What followed was a conversation nobody else would hear. It was a conversation carried on by a special link between them, a link they had shared since the incident that gave them the scars on their throats, an incident that had robbed them of their voices, and almost their lives.
Morning, Rica. Sleep well? the young man asked, his thoughts heavy with sleepiness.
The woman smiled. Very well given last night, Hal. If we weren't mute, the neighbours would be complaining.
Not that we really have any neighbours, which is just as well, Hal said. Between our business and our pleasure, well…
Frederica 'Rica' Sawyer chuckled mutely. Dealing with bodies, especially live ones, was a noisy business. Especially as her weapon of choice was a chainsaw. Which is far harder than it sounds: chainsaws are dangerous enough to use even when they are being used for their intended purpose of cutting through wood. They had a tendency to kick back in a way that would possibly end up with the user getting a face (or another body part) filled with chainsaw, not an amenable state of affairs as one would imagine. Being used as a weapon, despite what Hollywood would tell you, was even more dangerous than using it as intended. But Rica (only Hal could call her that) could swing that thing like Leatherface or Ash Williams. Not that she generally had much call to use it as a weapon.
Hal's weapon of choice could be called a cattle prod, in the same way that a modern battleship could be considered a boat. He walked with a limp (courtesy of a gunfight he and Rica got caught up in during their formative years in Roanapur), and he used a walking stick whenever he walked abroad. Said stick could also be used as a baton, or as an electroshock weapon with a number of settings, including 'Defecate' (he got the idea for that setting from watching an episode of Bottom that Chang had sent him a tape of(1)), 'Knock-Out', 'Defibrillate', 'Heart-Stopper', 'Char-Broil', and, at its strongest setting, 'Thunderstruck'. The only human victim of that last setting…well, Bao still griped about the smell of barbequed human flesh and excrement in the courtyard of the Yellow Flag, and how it took him days to find all the bits.
Balalaika had wanted to replicate the walking stick for sale on the black market, the wily Russian having a hand in weapons sales, but sadly, Hal could only produce a few more, partly because magic was involved in the creation of them, and it took time and too many rare materials to create them. So Balalaika was content to keep the walking sticks for her own men. Hal called his Mjolnir. It may not have been a hammer, but whatever.
Incidentally, apparently Revy nearly shot the hell out of Rock yesterday. They managed to kiss and make up, well, figuratively speaking. I thought that guy was a bit of a wimp, albeit one who manages to kick arse when push comes to shove, but someone who's able to stare down Revy when she's in one of her 'Charles Whitman Fever' moods has got to have titanium balls, Hal said as he got up and stretched.
Rica looked like she was about to call bullshit, before she said, When did you hear this?
When I was out getting the take-away, Hal said. I ran into them both just after Watsup let them go. Rock did most of the talking. I'm glad Revy didn't shoot him. Apparently things have been tense since they were sent to retrieve stuff from that sunken sub. But now, Revy likes him, I think. I know Balalaika does. She's got that look in her eyes that she had when she talks to me and some of her men.
Rica scoffed. She sent us the bodies of some fools she had interrogated recently. Last I heard, she intends to liquidate the Columbian Cartels soon.
Hal frowned. That's weird. I think the Lagoon Company have to do a job for them today, last I heard from Dutch. I think they had to pick up some heroin or something. Hopefully, Balalaika won't turn on them. She's nice to those she likes, and is polite and courteous to everyone else, save for outright enemies. If you're her enemy, you might as well bend over and kiss your arse goodbye. I prefer dealing with her than Revy, though. Revy's like a bottle of nitroglycerine with tits.
Rica snorted at his frequent and not inaccurate assessment of Revy 'Two-Hands', infamous for her skilled gunplay. While Hal was on relatively good terms with the mercurial gunwoman, Revy was known for a hair-trigger temper, and a bad relationship with Bao of the Yellow Flag bar, partly because Bao blamed Revy for whatever happened when a massive gunfight or something happened. Rock, whose real name was Rokuro Okajima (Hal had to admit, Dutch was right: 'Rock' was a punchier and cooler name), caused one of those when the company he once worked for tried to have him murdered, and a disc he had retrieved, when Rock first joined the Lagoon Company. Well, he was kidnapped by Revy.
Rebecca 'Revy Two-Hands' Lee was not an easy person to get to know. While when calm, and not having anyone pry into her past, she was quite amiable, she also was quite volatile (to say the least), mercurial, and prone to frequent acts of physical violence. She was dangerous enough when swearing her head off and firing off her handguns like something out of a John Woo movie, but when she got serious and quite with her guns out…well, that was the time to bend over backwards and kiss your arse goodbye, and hope that you weren't the person who pissed her off. Hal knew that Dutch called that state 'Charles Whitman Fever', after the notorious mass murderer.
Thankfully, Hal had never encountered Revy in the grips of that state, but she was lethal enough when she lost her temper. He could consider the Chinese-American a friend, but she was a volatile enough woman even to her friends and comrades. Only Dutch or Balalaika could ever consistently calm her down. Hal actually preferred the company of Benny and Dutch. Benny was closer to a normal guy than Dutch or Revy, and Dutch, despite his ruthlessness, was a nice guy, once you got past the whole 'scary big black man who claimed to be a Vietnam veteran' thing. And from what he saw of Rock, Hal liked Rock too, though he reckoned that, if Rock survived beyond his first few months in Roanapur, it'd be a miracle.
Revy, however, was freaked out by the fact that Hal was a wizard, and knew magic. The Statute of Secrecy was looser here in Roanapur than in most other places in the world, so they could get away with more things here. And in a town filled with strange criminals, magic was just seen as another advantage…as long as you could survive.
Hal had a most unusual teacher, though, and it was this teacher that allowed him to tutor Rica. That, plus some books their most frequent customer and former boss Mr Chang, as well as Balalaika, smuggled in, helped them become proficient in magic. Not that they used it much. Overspecialisation did tend to become a weakness, after all…
As Rica went about her grisly work, whistling beneath her surgical mask as she sawed through the limbs of the latest idiot to piss off Balalaika, Hal heard the buzzer for the 'service door' ring out. He sighed, and went over to the door, and opened it, still in his own scrubs.
"Hi, Sawyer and Sawyer!" the Taiwanese enforcer said with a grin. She was a buxom young woman with dark-hair and a frequent smile on her face and a cheerful demeanour, employed by Chang of the Triad. Unfortunately, her broken English made her sound like a bad Chinese stereotype. "How you two? You busy?" Hal shrugged. "You put translation charm on, yes? I sound like retard in English."
Hal sighed, before he cast the charm on himself (thank Merlin for wandless magic), remembering to set it to Taiwanese Hokkien. He then gestured for her to go ahead. "Oh, thank God for that. I hate sounding like an idiot," Shenhua said. "Anyway, I got news from the boss. Mr Chang told me that we've got wizards from England sniffing around, including some old fuck with a long beard and twinkling eyes. We used Occlumency just in case, but they're looking for Harry Potter."
Hal felt a chill at hearing that name. His old name. There was a blackboard near the door, and while he had the electrolarynx, he rarely used it while on the job, in case it got filthy. Instead, he scrawled, rather messily, on the blackboard, Anyone else?
"Some greasy-haired prick with a big nose and a pretty sharp tongue," Shenhua said with a shrug. "Called himself 'severest snake' or something. Seriously, these British wizards have stupid names. There were a couple that looked like cops. They had the look."
Hal gave her a thumbs up. He then scrawled on the blackboard, Thanks, Shenhua. Looks like we'll be having visitors soon. But try to stall them for as long as possible if they try to get more out of you. Has Mr Chang told Balalaika?
Shenhua peered at the blackboard. The translation charm was for spoken rather than written languages, so she read it over, before saying, "Yeah, he rang her up to warn her. Anyway, I thought I'd let you know. Oh, and they tried to warn us about some supposed Dark Lord's followers. That snake-faced fuckhead Balalaika mentioned? Full of Malt, or something?" Shenhua said. "The one whose followers have the tacky tattoo showing a skull fellating a snake?"
Hal snorted at Shenhua's assessment. He then wrote on the blackboard, It's Voldemort. If he or his Death Eaters come here… give them a Roanapur welcome, okay?
Shenhua grinned viciously. "It'll be my pleasure. I'll see you later, okay, Sawyer. Give my regards to your brother." Hal didn't bother to correct her. He'd find it amusing when she learned the truth later.
As Shenhua left, Hal returned to where Rica was still dealing with the bodies. On her glance at him from behind her goggles, he said, via their link, British wizards are nosing around, including that old goat Dumbledore.
Rica snickered quietly behind her mask, her electrolarynx currently not being worn. She beckoned Hal closer, and then pulled down her mask, and hissed in a hoarse whisper, little more than her breath being shaped by her lips and tongue, "Then we will have to give them a suitable welcome, shan't we?"
Hal chuckled. He had to admit, he was looking forward to it. Soon, they would rue the day they crossed the Sawyer Twins…once known as Harry James Potter…and Hydra Delphini Lestrange…
CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:
So, here you have it. Harry's shacked up with Frederica Sawyer, but his past has come back to haunt him. Then again, maybe he has come back to haunt his past…and Frederica's.
Now, those of you who read Killing Floor's first chapter will notice a LOT of changes, not least of which is Sawyer having a rather wizardly name. While writing Killing Floor, I actually came up with the idea that Sawyer was actually Bellatrix's Squib lovechild. I thought it a good idea. Whether or not she is Voldemort's daughter (a concept I have already visited in Underground's Champion, my Undertale crossover) or Rodolphus Lestrange's daughter, I haven't decided yet, though I put in Delphini as her middle name as a sly nod to a certain character.
I also made Harry/Hal mute as a plot point we will get to later. I wanted them to have a bond that made them like a certain pair of creepy murderous twins who may or may not appear later. The electrified walking stick could be considered to be inspired by a number of similar devices. Reno's Electro-Rod from Final Fantasy VII, Gilgamesh von Wulfenbach's lightning projector in Girl Genius (especially in volume 7), and, as we will see in the annotations, Richie Rich's faulty souped-up cattle prod from Bottom.
Also, given a suggestion in the reviews of the original version of the chapter in The Cauldron, I decided to include Harry and Sawyer meeting Roberta. I also decided to use the anime's timeline rather than the manga, as I wanted Revy and Rock to be on better terms by the point of Roberta's arrival.
1. Bottom is a rather crass British sitcom by the late Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson about a pair of rather crude, violent flatmates (Richie Rich, no relation to the comic book character, and Eddie Hitler, again, no relation) and their misadventures. With a lot of violent slapstick and cringe comedy, it can be an acquired taste, but can be hilarious. A running gag in the Halloween episode Terror is Richie wielding a massive but faulty cattle prod that, every time he uses it, it causes HIM to shit himself. And if you think THAT is bad, wait until you get later into the episode, which involves a Brussel Sprouts concoction that knocks the eater out and gives them literally burning farts for ages.
